Around the bay with Jim's Bait & Tackle

Cup weekend and the weather couldn’t have been any better with sunshine, light winds creating plenty of opportunity to head out for a fish.

Once the easterly stopped the reports were good in the lead up to the weekend. Saturday was patchy but picked up for the rest of the weekend and we had some very good catches reported.

Being Cup long weekend there were plenty of visitors from other regional areas and it was good to see the tables out the front of the pubs, restaurants and cafes full with people enjoying the sunshine while helping put some money into the local economy.

Overall, the fishing has been ok but patchy over the last couple of weeks but with the warmer days it’s showing signs that the fishing is on the improve.

We have seen some very good land based catches this season so far and hopefully the weather will settle soon, and we will start to get reports from those waiting to fish offshore.

Land based this week has continued to be consistent and at times out fished the boats, especially for calamari.

The beaches at Ventnor and in Cleeland Bight produced plenty with some that were first thought to be clumps of weed they were so heavy.

There was a mixture of baited jigs and artificial ones under floats and we had several reports from customers starting to cast and retrieve off the beach catching a few.

If you are not using a float and casting off the beach just remember not to let it sink too much as it will get caught in the weed and the jig will be gone.

It takes a bit of practice to get it right. Finally some better numbers off the jetties and plenty of ink stains to go with the reports, artificial jigs the preferred and most successful but some using baited jigs did ok.

It’s just a little harder off the jetty using a float with other people fishing.

Boating and the calamari were ok with most at least finding a couple to use to upgrade to a red or two.

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